The HD is laserish, and you were looking for a durable blade and have your sticking problem solved. It is a superior blade that won't yet be the right one for you according to the needs you've formulated.

Lots of gyutos can be converted from RH to LH yourself. Some are shaped in a markedly different way but many/most are not. Traditional single bevel knives are strongly left or right handed and can't be changed but a gyuto generally isn't this way.

JapaneseChefKnives is a great vendor that sells lots of left handed knives. They ship almost everywhere at a reasonable price. Awesome company! If you want something special or individualized Koki will hook you up. A link: http://www.japanesechefsknife.com/products.html

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." - Aristotle

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." - Aristotle

About transforming a RH: You may neutralize it, a bit. You may recenter the edge, and thin the left face to reduce counter-clockwise steering after recentering. So far so good. What you can't: flattening the entire right face to have the edge closer to the food, and convexing the entire left face to allow better release.
That's why a transformed blade will underperform when compared to an adapted one with an inverted geometry.

True but they're not all made like that. Some really are pretty symmetrical with the actual bevel being asymmetric.

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." - Aristotle

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." - Aristotle

In my opinion you need to get a good Japanese knife with decent steel and forget other knifes like German, French - their steel is just not good enough and they get dull immediately -> you will need constant resharpening. Of course here you will need to sacrifice mono steel, but honestly I do not believe that it makes any difference.

After that you need to decide if you want high maintenance carbon steel that rusts all the time or get stainless steel that does not rust (in any case you need 63 HRC or above). I see that you already have tojiro shirogami so you are aware on the maintenance of carbon steel and the fact that you must wipe it constantly and clean it immediately after using it.

That is the reason why I did not want to go for carbon steel when first buying Japanese knives. I decided for it only later.

I have a few decently priced suggestions for you:

First one is Akifusa Guyto whcih is made out of PM stainless steel which is pretty hard (around 64 HRC). The knife performs great, it is easy to sharpen. You can get is laser sharp. It holds the sharpness decently long. It costs 200 USD of epicedge.com and you will get it shipped to Norway for your budget - they also write a smaller price on package so you pay less customs ;)

Second cheaper option is carbon steel Aogami(Blue) 2 or Super - Moritaka Hamono. As you know it is higher maintenance but it is cheaper as Akifusa. You can get is directly on the web site of Moritaka: http://www.moritakahamono.com/

you can get Gyuto 210mm with Aogami 2 for 9500 JPY = 70 EUR

and

Gyuto 210mm in aogami super steel for 13000 JPY = 96 EUR

shipping to Belgium was 2000 JPY = 15 EUR

and I agreed with them that they wrote cheaper price so I did not pay much custom.

I must say that cutting with this knife is extremely nice, it is extremely sharp, better as Akifusa, but it's a lot of maintainance. You need to constantly wiping it with a cloth to keep it dry. I am a home cook and for me (and my amount of cooking) it is still manageable, but I do not imagine how such knifes are used in professional kitchens?! Can any profi chef explain is Aogami/Shirogami knives are really used in profi kitchens? And how (constant wiping?)?

and the last suggestion which is much more expensive but very good - Miyabi 7000MCD

this is a beautiful looking knife in damascus style with extremely hard steel - ZDP 189 which is HRC 66. It stays sharp for extremely long time and is also stainless steel. It is a bit harder to sharpen but not so hard. I see it on ebay.de going for 290EUR...

I must say that the nicest feel in cutting any food gives me Moritaka with carbon steel. There really is a difference!

Constant wiping? If you build sufficient patina, just wipe when you're done cutting. Exceptions for acidic food of course. I have a damp and a dry kitchen towel available when I'm cutting. You should be wiping your knife and board in between tasks anyway. If not, you're just working dirty.

Super high HRC is not for everyone. The negative effects can be brittleness and also sharpening difficulty. My average carbon steel is around 62. Keeps an edge long enough but can also be touched up with a few swipes on a stone.

Constant wiping? If you build sufficient patina, just wipe when you're done cutting. Exceptions for acidic food of course. I have a damp and a dry kitchen towel available when I'm cutting. You should be wiping your knife and board in between tasks anyway. If not, you're just working dirty.

Super high HRC is not for everyone. The negative effects can be brittleness and also sharpening difficulty. My average carbon steel is around 62. Keeps an edge long enough but can also be touched up with a few swipes on a stone.

OK that's what I meant - wiping between tasks (except if you are cutting many kilos of food). I must agree that I still need to build more patina on my Aogami. It has a bit but not a lot ;)

About brittleness: I never had an issue with it, except when I sharpened my ZDP189 knife to 10 degrees. I have now all my knives on 12.5 degrees and it really is not a problem. But of course I take care not to do stupid things with them that would chip them - like cutting bones.

About sharpening: honestly I do not see significant difference in sharpening my ZDP189, Aogami super, ZDP and PM knives compared with my Wushoff and Henckels... I am sharpening with EdgePro, perhaps this makes it easier...

I'm not saying high hardness steels are not for you, or mrbushido who already has a good idea of exactly what he wants. Thats more for someone getting their first gyuto reading this. It takes some extra amount of care in use and maintenance already, extra hardness only compounds that.

If you can't feel any difference in sharpening, that's a problem even on edgepro. To use edgepro properly, you should still check angles with a marker, check for burr etc. Otherwise you're blindly grinding away steel perhaps unnecessarily. Because the stone is smaller, and changing angles is more cumbersome, it's actually slower than freehand to do correctly. I think it's great for small knives.

I'm not saying high hardness steels are not for you, or mrbushido who already has a good idea of exactly what he wants. Thats more for someone getting their first gyuto reading this. It takes some extra amount of care in use and maintenance already, extra hardness only compounds that.

If you can't feel any difference in sharpening, that's a problem even on edgepro. To use edgepro properly, you should still check angles with a marker, check for burr etc. Otherwise you're blindly grinding away steel perhaps unnecessarily. Because the stone is smaller, and changing angles is more cumbersome, it's actually slower than freehand to do correctly. I think it's great for small knives.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MillionsKnives

Not to mention earlier on this very thread, we discussed that no japanese knives are really symmetric. You really should be checking your angles using the marker test even with edge pro.

About checking the angles, I really do not care for that. When I get my knife new I always put it to 15 degrees - I do not need to check for anything, I juts want ot have it 15 to see how the steel performs. Later when I see I am not getting any chipping I put all of them to 12.5. Until now all my knifes are OK with this. I tried once 10 degrees with ZDP but it started to chip so I put it back on 12.5 which is ok. And by all means I am checking for burr as I do not want to grind away too much material! I want my knives to last me a long, long time.

I can imagine that freehanding is making things faster and you can produce nicer (even concave) edges, but honestly EP is the easiest and fastest option I found except using some kind of machine.

I like my knives and specially I like to have them really sharp all the time, but I do not want to spend too much time and effort on it. That's the reason why I ditched all my knives from Solingen and went to Japanese. Now using EP on them I get max result with min effort ;)

The shoulder is where the bevel meets the face. There are exceptions -- when, whith asymmetric blades, one wants to create more friction on one side in order to counteract steering -- but normally you will at least ease it, or even have it disappear by convexing.